PERFORMING ARTS

Willie, Waylon, and the Boys: How Nashville Outsiders Changed Country Music Forever

by Brian Fairbanks
Hachette. Jun. 2024. 464p. ISBN 9780306831089. $32.50. MUSIC
COPY ISBN
Supergroups (bands consisting of members already famous of their own accord) are generally thought of as a rock phenomenon. But in the 1970s through the 1990s, four country superstars—Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson—came together to record three albums as the Highwaymen. Not only were they a force together, but as individuals they all stood against the slickness of Nashville and forged their own styles. Fairbanks’s (Wizards: David Duke, America’s Wildest Election, and the Rise of the Far Right) well-researched and enjoyable book is not a history of the Highwaymen as a group. Instead, it’s about four individual artists whose paths intertwined throughout their most productive years. The narrative doesn’t shy from the truth about these men either; it covers their creative failures, broken relationships, and substance-use disorders.
VERDICT Fairbanks keeps the story moving, deftly changing from one musician to another throughout the book. This volume sings on each page and is suited to any library’s music history section.
Reviewed by Brett Rohlwing , Jun 14, 2024
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